CODEPINK’s busiest protester, preparing for Obama, says she’s been warned to back off

CODEPINK’s busiest demonstrator Nancy Mancias — who has disrupted high profile speakers from Barack Obama to Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — says she’s been warned by the Secret Service to back off her activism.

The veteran protester from San Rafael has been carried by cops out of Bay Area political events starring Obama, GOP strategist Karl Rove, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former vice president Dick Cheney among others. But this time, she will be outside, not inside, to make her case to the President Monday in Oakland.

“The Secret Service has given me a warning,” laughed Mancias in an interview Sunday, as she was preparing to protest GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s big fundraiser at the Fairmont Hotel. “The San Fancisco Secret Service know about my demonstrations..and they said, “We recognize you. And it doesn’t look good if we see you again.'”

Mancias protesting Romney Sunday in San Francisco

Mancias, listed as coordinator for CODEPINK’s War Criminals and Ground the Drones campaigns, said during her recent protest of Geithner — whose speech she disrupted — “they pulled me in a room and basically interrogated me and asked if I had any thoughts of killing the president or hurting the vice president.”

Then, they said, “we need to search your car,” she recalled. “I have nothing to hide and walked them to the car and they went through my trunk and rifled through my papers, and they went through the glove compartment.”

“It was a little freaky — and intimidating,” she said. “If that was their intent, it worked.”

Still, Mancias said she hasn’t been deterred from making her voice heard.

She was outside Romney’s big fundraiser at the Fairmont Hotel Sunday, pounding her “tax the rich” message and getting out her stand that the GOP candidate is a “1 percenter” who stands for corporate America, not average Americans. “He says corporations are people,” she said. “We’re saying, if they are, then we should be allowed to arrest them.”

The longtime CODEPINK activist, who also has a following on Twitter, will also be outside Obama’s fundraisers today in Oakland, with a strong anti-war message. Her latest tweet says she’s on the way to the city’s Scottish Rite Temple to greet the President as he arrives there to meet with high tech donors who have paid $38,500 each to sit down with him.

“I’m working with Veterans against the War as well as Afghans for Peace,” she said. “We’re hoping for a big anti-war contingent outside the Obama event…our message is end the U.S. war in Afghanistan.”

“The president is the man in charge — and he needs the will to do that,” she said.

We will keep you updated throughout the day on protests and Obama’s visit to Oakland and Piedmont.
Stay tuned.